How can measuring solar output from the sun help us understand climate change?

Answers

Solar activity has been decreasing, and is now the lowest it had been in decades. This is seen as proof that the changes in our climate (which is getting warmer) is due to factors here on Earth. This observation of the Sun added a lot of strength to the argument that climate change is due to the greenhouse effect, and is therefore human-made, as skeptics were ready to blame the sun for global warming. As of right now, the sun has a much smaller effect on the climate than CO2 emissions, and this decrease in solar activity does not mean a “global cooling” that would serve as a counterweight to the climate change here on Earth. The sun’s activity is only “a few hundredths of one percent down” and co2 levels are 50 to 60 percent higher than normal.

As nice as it is to prove global warming to skeptics, a cooling sun is still of some concern to scientists. Right now, greenhouse emissions are the leading cause of climate change, but “small variations in the sun’s brightness are more powerful than changes in greenhouse gas contributions”

Another point to mention is how we are interested how much solar output we receive to understand how much is actually being reflected back to the earth. It’s a coupled interest. The more we reflect back, the less is being trapped in our atmosphere and the warmer our environment is.